


Breadwinner

by floatingearth



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Din's Covert, Episode: s01e03 The Sin, Gen, Guilt, Honor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28828251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floatingearth/pseuds/floatingearth
Summary: It is unsafe for more than one member of the covert to leave, and it is impossible for them to survive underground without support. Bounties are just Din's way of keeping them all alive.So why does this one have him feeling so horrible?
Kudos: 21





	Breadwinner

People see him and his tribe as piles of scrap to be scavenged and sold for parts, or as trophies to be hung above doorways and behind desks. On a lucky day, all anyone wants are the answers to questions they barely understand, but even those are dangerous. Din keeps his name a careful secret for a reason.

If even a few of them were to leave the covert, it would all be lost. Just two or three, let alone _dozens_ of them wandering the outside world would draw greedy, dishonorable eyes. They are a shadow of their former selves; they cannot afford to be noticed. One Mandalorian can slip between worlds, without anyone above ground suspecting anything but a lost soul. Somehow, the duty falls to Din.

Some would call his life an unsavory, dishonorable one. Maybe in another life, so would he, but not this one. In his corner of the galaxy, bounty hunting is as good a way of making a living as any. For a man of his particular skill set, it is the clear, obvious choice. So, he takes every job he can get his hands on. He takes the difficult ones, the jobs with high payouts and higher risks.

Sometimes he fights fair. Sometimes he doesn’t. Anyone with a bounty on their head earned it, he reminds himself, and anyone who didn’t want a blaster fired clean through their skull should have thought to duck.

If he feels any guilt about it, when he goes home, it subsides. His covert is still there. A tribe of honorable warriors and their children do not starve, and their hiding place is not found out. Life goes on, and his people survive.

It’s not that he’s the only one who pulls his weight. Other people purify the water, maintain the tunnels, stand guard at every entrance; still others work in the trades. But some things cannot be done in the tunnels. They cannot grow anything down here. And yet. There are mouths to feed, medicines to procure, and half a million other expenses. All of that costs money. Making money means collecting bounties.

This bounty is even better than most. It pays in pure beskar steel, heavy, cold, and gleaming even in the dark light of the tunnels. Beskar is a rare, precious gift these days. So much of it is in the hands of those that do not understand its worth. The children are growing up. In just a few years, the oldest of them will begin to swear the creed. When they will need armor of their own, for protection and for unity, and to make good on their vows. The excess will go to them; it always does and always will, as long as Din has half a say in the matter.

Besides the form of its payment, this bounty is really no different from the others. This time, he had not even had to kill it, just hand it over to those who had tasked him with finding the thing. But it is more than a thing, isn’t it? Din is nobody’s father, but he’s spent time around the little foundlings before. There is something achingly familiar about those big, dark eyes, those little hands reaching for anything shiny. Even if the child is of a species he has never seen before, Din knows a child when he sees one.

This child is going to haunt him, he thinks.

Over the years, Din has taken more jobs than he can count. For so many of them, he’s done worse. For this job, he’s handed over a living, breathing child. For all he knows, the child is still perfectly alive. But he doesn’t know that for sure.

It shouldn’t matter, at least not this much. He should just be able to move on, like he has every other time he’s taken a job. The questions rattling his mind like flies trapped in a jar shouldn’t even be there, but they are. There is this feeling in his stomach like a ball of ice that won’t melt, and it is telling him he made a horrible mistake.

Every pound of the armorer’s hammer brings him back to that day- it must have been thirty years ago, now, maybe more- that killed his birth family and changed the course of his life forever.

 _Blaster fire and smoke, screaming, blood, unstoppable droids, begging his parents to climb inside the bunker with him, inescapable darkness, the sudden, burning knowledge that his family was dead. Light, an outstretched hand_ -

When he was a child, he had been saved from death and war by a Mandalorian, a man he now remembers with more clarity than his birth father. He has found a child even more helpless than he was. Instead of saving it, he has given it up to Imperials to exploit. He almost feels sick. 

He needs to get out of here. He needs to get as far away from Nevarro as the Razor Crest will take him. Work will clear his head. On the hunt, he has to stay alert. He can’t afford to waste precious seconds worrying about a strange little thing when it could cost him his life. If he stays busy, he won’t have time to think about any of this until he is already over it. He can question his choices when they don’t matter anymore. 

The armorer would never admit she is an artist, but she is skilled, and her finished work truly is beautiful. A full cuirass of beskar is an honor that Din isn’t sure he deserves. He really does need to get off this planet for a while.

On his ship, he reaches for the accelerator, and discovers that the smooth ball that is supposed to serve as a handle is missing. It must have been the kid- the whole ride back to Nevarro, he had been reaching for things. Din had spent half the flight fixing settings when he would press buttons without understanding what they did. A few times, he’d had to wrestle objects that had no business being chewed on out of the child’s mouth.

The ball of ice in his stomach sinks.

Din knows in an instant that he has to go back.

**Author's Note:**

> Or: Din tries to justify himself and I try to understand how the covert works at 12:30 am


End file.
